Araghast the Pillager

"Blood Ravens, hear me! I am Araghast the Pillager!" - Araghast to the Blood Ravens

Araghast the Pillager, Lord Araghast or simply Araghast, was the Chaos Lord (Or more specifically, a Chaos Terminator Lord) leading a Black Legion War-band on Aurelia. Arrogant, bloodthirsty, manly, awesome and very boastful and prone to taunt. Feared far and wide for his terrible savagery, and among the greatest warriors of the Black Legion. He wields a great many weapons, including a power/daemon sword, a combi-bolter, a combi-flamer, lightning claws (of an older design than loyalist variations, meaning that rather than giving you wolverine type claws while leaving your fingers free, the actual claw part is placed over your fingers), and a blood maul of khorne.

Chaos Rising

He invades Aurelia. Inciting rebellions and incursions and sending out various strike forces to attack Imperial worlds on Aurelia. On one of the missions,he is seen, along with Eliphas, watching as the blood ravens escape. Araghast states that he allowed them to escape because killing them will now will lose the value of the traitor within their ranks (A rather rare and sneaky feat for one who serves A Gigantic Bloodthirsty Maniac who has a fetish for Skulls). He later challenges the Blood Ravens to a battle (Which he soon learns is a mistake he will not live to learn from). Nearing death, he calls for Eliphas to open a portal. But Eliphas, being the treasonous, backstabbing, deceptive, opportunist and cowardly dog that he is, leaves him to his fate. He still manages to wound the Blood Ravens rather nicely. Slaughtering many of their followers, destroying their worlds as they did nothing, and managed to put up a much better fight than the Tyranid Hive Tyrant Alpha at the end of the first game, at least, but like the Hive Tyrant before him, his face was bashed in by Davian Thule's Power Claws (because thule is so awesome that you pretty much have to always use him), whatever you equipped your force commander with (I personally gave him terminator armor, a cyclone missile launcher, and lightning claws), Jonah Orion's psychic powers (you did use him right?), whatever you equipped Avitus with (Personally, I gave him terminator armor, a cyclone missile launcher, and a special assault cannon), or whoever else was in your squad when you descended upon Araghast to wreck his shit.

Though the poor Hive Tyrant was mobbed by all five squads of blood ravens, Davian Thule, and Gabriel Angelos all at the same time while Araghast only had to fight four of the seven blood raven characters/squads at once. While he had more health (about 25,000 hit points more or so) than the Tyrant Alpha, he had a significantly lower DPS. Sadly, he proves to be a lesser Challenge than Eliphas during the final battle in Chaos rising, as he has only half as much health as Eliphas who is only wearing normal power armor and didn't have a helmet, and Eliphas had the benefit of his annoying Shrine's of tzeentch (being attacked by a tower that shits out doombolts is not fun) and Khorne (being attacked by a tower that shits out bloodletters isn't fun either). But Araghast is and always will be more fun to fight than Ulkair the Great Unclean One.

About Araghast

He died too fucking early in the franchise, THIS IS WHAT WE KNOW OF HIM. Instead he got succeeded by some asshatted failure of a dark apostle who has abandoned and punished by HIS OWN LEGION and became an Aspirant of another, now living out the rest of his existence as 40K's second Team Rocket equivalent. BRING BACK ARAGHAST!!!

He is an Exalted Champion of Khorne (Just like Carron and Crull. However, unlike them,. he's not JUST a raging maniac, he's a raging maniac who's feared and respected for his phenomenal fighting ability. Something Khorne expects unconditionally from his Champions.), and like all devotees and servants of Khorne, he's a bloodthirsty, daemonic, super-strong maniac of tremendous fighting skill. But it is important to note that he is not exclusively devoted to Khorne as he made extensive usage of sorcerers within his Grand Company (the pre-codex astartes version of a chapter) and himself relied on sorcery in his last battle; teleporting away to catch his breath every now and then and quite clearly intended to flee the scene when he asked Eliphas to open a portal after being reduced to having naught but a small sliver of health.

As stated above, he is very boastful and among his many exploits is the ravaging of a thousand worlds (Which is totally badass. Again, as is stated above, he is prone to excessive taunting. He constantly mocks the Blood Ravens by calling them "Lowly Lick-Spittles", "Dead and Useless as the Empra",and insulted them further by calling them "Brothers", a fad that seems to be growing amongst Chaos Space Marines since Eliphas, it seems. He seems to treat Eliphas quite well. Though like all Chaos Lords,he still treats him (rightly)as a lowly, defenseless, dependent, lickspittle coward. Which Eliphas is.

Considering that he was capable of reversing the judgement of a Daemon Prince and returning Eliphas to the corporeal plane speaks a great deal of Araghast's power, though he probably got his Sorcerer to do it since he has no psychic powers. But if he can kowtow a sorcerer that powerful into working for him, then he himself is very potent. He may have sent said sorcerer to Chalderis to attack the blood raven initiates with the full knowledge that the sorcerer would probably not making in order to dispose of his potential threat to his leadership and thus avoid being Sindri'd. He may have also done the same to his Plague champion on Typhon for the same reason. But ultimately, he still ended up getting Sindri'd, by Eliphas.

Apart from his personality, he's also very powerful. And to prove this point, here's something that will make it perfectly clear: HE'S WEARING FUCKING TERMINATOR ARMOR and unlike some other, incompetent fuckwad of the Black Legion instead of staying in the back coordinating what where and when shit happens he's out in the frontlines putting that heavy clunky hunk of armor to good use (and admittedly he's rather great at it).

Trivia

• Many fans, at first, thought of him as Eliphas, as he is voiced by Paul Dobson Fred Tatasciore, who did an impersonation of Paul Dobson. (Who was the original voice of Eliphas during Dark Crusade). In skirmish mode, he is voiced by Steve Blum (That guy who does Cyrus' sexy voice) and he does a FUCKAWESOME job of it!! Though the Chaos Lord's voice is a little high pitched for some people's tastes.
• Of all the other previous Chaos Lords (Bale, Crull, Carron) he is equal to Eliphas' badassery, nay, he surpasses it. The only thing negative about him is his habit of making fatal mistakes. Like challenging the Force Commander and his squad which resulted in getting his ass whooped. Another is trusting Eliphas to oversee the teleportations which resulted in Eliphas betraying him. Despite this, he actually put up a pretty good fight, and even when he was on death's door, when Eliphas refused to open a portal to take him home, he managed to use his last ounce of strength to RAGE at Eliphas as if he wasn't horribly injured (which he was) and make his last (but somewhat futile) stand against the Blood Ravens. Sadly, Martellus, Eliphas, and Ulkair were all harder than he was.
• He cannot say anything without a massive amount of ham and makes up for the lack of hammy lines in Dawn of War 2 on his own.

See Also

• Blood Ravens, hear me! I am Araghast The Pillager! Master of Hounds, the Last of the Black Legion! You, and ALL you kind are COWARDS! LOWLY LICKSPITTLES! You must be emulated that pathetic pile of bones you call your Emperor! You are as dead and as useless as him! I am destroying your worlds Blood Ravens, yet you do nothing. I see your precious craft, hanging in orbit above Aurelia, I AM HERE! FACE ME, IF YOU DARE!!!

• BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!!